BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — More than three weeks after dropping a reelection bid, President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday blamed a software program bug and demanded the electoral authority annul votes forged on most of Brazil’s nation’s digital voting machines, although impartial consultants say the bug doesn’t have an effect on the reliability of outcomes.
Such an motion would go away Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining legitimate votes — and a reelection victory, Marcelo de Bessa, the lawyer who filed the 33-page request on behalf of the president and his Liberal Party, instructed reporters.
The electoral authority has already declared victory for Bolsonaro’s nemesis, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and even most of the president’s allies have accepted the outcomes. Protesters in cities throughout the nation have steadfastly refused to do the identical, notably with Bolsonaro declining to concede.
Liberal Party chief Valdemar Costa and an auditor employed by the get together instructed reporters in Brasilia that their analysis discovered all machines courting from earlier than 2020 — practically 280,000 of them, or about 59% of the whole used within the Oct. 30 runoff — lacked particular person identification numbers in inner logs.
Neither defined how which may have affected election outcomes, however mentioned they had been asking the electoral authority to invalidate all votes forged on these machines.
The grievance characterised the bug as “irreparable non-compliance due to malfunction” that referred to as into query the authenticity of the outcomes.
Immediately afterward, the top of the electoral authority issued a ruling that implicitly raised the likelihood that Bolsonaro’s personal get together may endure from such a problem.
Alexandre de Moraes mentioned the courtroom wouldn’t think about the grievance except the get together provides an amended report inside 24 hours that would come with outcomes from the primary electoral spherical on Oct. 2, by which the Liberal Party received extra seats in each congressional homes than every other.
The bug hadn’t been identified beforehand, but consultants mentioned it additionally doesn’t have an effect on outcomes. Each voting machine can nonetheless be simply recognized by means of different means, like its metropolis and voting district, in keeping with Wilson Ruggiero, a professor of laptop engineering and digital methods on the Polytechnic School of the University of Sao Paulo.
Diego Aranha, an affiliate professor of methods safety at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has participated in official safety assessments of Brazil’s electoral system, agreed.
“It does not undermine the reliability or credibility in any way,” Ruggiero instructed The Associated Press by cellphone. “The key point that guarantees correctness is the digital signature associated with each voting machine.”
While the machines don’t have particular person identification numbers of their inner logs, these numbers do seem on printed receipts that present the sum of all votes forged for every candidate, mentioned Aranha, including the bug was solely detected because of the efforts by the electoral authority to offer larger transparency.
Bolsonaro’s lower than two-point loss to da Silva on Oct. 30 was the narrowest margin since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy. While the president hasn’t explicitly cried foul, he has refused to concede defeat or congratulate his opponent — leaving room for supporters to attract their very own conclusions.
Many have been protesting relentlessly, making claims of election fraud and demanding that the armed forces intervene.
Dozens of Bolsonaro supporters gathered outdoors the information convention on Tuesday, decked out within the inexperienced and yellow of Brazil’s flag and chanting patriotic songs. Some verbally attacked and pushed journalists attempting to enter the venue.
Bolsonaro spent greater than a 12 months claiming Brazil’s digital voting system is liable to fraud, with out ever presenting proof.
Brazil started utilizing an digital voting system in 1996 and election safety consultants think about such methods much less safe than hand-marked paper ballots, as a result of they go away no auditable paper path. But Brazil’s system has been intently scrutinized by home and worldwide consultants who’ve by no means discovered proof of it being exploited to commit fraud.
The Senate’s president, Rodrigo Pacheco, mentioned Tuesday afternoon that the election outcomes are “unquestionable.”
Bolsonaro has been virtually utterly secluded within the official residence since his Oct. 30 defeat, inviting widespread hypothesis as as to if he’s dejected or plotting to cling to energy.
In an interview with newspaper O Globo, Vice President Hamilton Mourão chalked up Bolsonaro’s absence to erysipelas, a pores and skin an infection on his legs that he mentioned prevents the president from sporting pants.
But his his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker, has been extra direct.
“We always distrusted these machines. … We want a massive audit,” the youthful Bolsonaro mentioned final week at a convention in Mexico City. “There is very strong evidence to order an investigation of Brazil’s election.”
For its audit, the Liberal Party employed the Legal Vote Institute, a gaggle that has been essential of the present system, saying it defies the legislation by failing to offer a digital document of each particular person vote.
In a separate report introduced earlier this month, the Brazilian navy mentioned there have been flaws within the nation’s electoral methods and proposed enhancements, however didn’t substantiate claims of fraud from a few of Bolsonaro’s supporters.
Analysts have urged that the armed forces, which have been a key part of Bolsonaro’s administration, could have maintained a semblance of uncertainty over the problem to keep away from displeasing the president. In a subsequent assertion, the Defense Ministry careworn that whereas it had not discovered any proof of fraud within the vote counting, it couldn’t exclude that risk.
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Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press author Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.
